Epic Has Awarded Grants To Almost 400 Projects This Year

The Epic Megagrants fund is living up to its name: a large number of artists and companies using Unreal Engine have benefited from the scheme since its launch in 2019.

Grants have been handed to more than 1,600 creators and teams across 89 countries in total, including almost 400 this year. The grants generally go to projects that incorporate Unreal, whether in entertainment, academia, product design, or one of a number of other fields.

Epic Games, which runs the $100-million fund, has published a list of many of the recipients to date. Click here to read it and see trailers of individual projects, or watch the highlights reel below:

Epic is the creator of hit game Fortnite and Unreal, the engine that powers it. Unreal is at the heart of the real-time rendering revolution in animation and vfx. It is widely used in virtual production, the set of techniques that allows filmmakers to visualize and adjust synthetic elements throughout production, and is central to the development of the metaverse.

Many animated projects have benefited from grants this year, including sci-fi series (and game) Metropius from Australia’s 18 Degrees, a feature based on the Epic of Gilgamesh from Argentina’s Hook Up Animation, and action-adventure series Forlorn from L.A.-based animator Alex St. Pierre.

Other recipients include indie game developers like Ukraine’s Vidloonnya Reborn, Irish musician Noisestorm, the U.K.’s Great Ape Games, and France’s Redlock Studio. Grants have also gone to a consultancy that helps brands expand into the metaverse, a tool that creates animated battlemaps for tabletop RPG games, medical imagery software, and more.

Image at top: “Chase and Catch,” an upcoming series from Canada’s Digital Dimension Entertainment Group